Lehmann Maupin returns to Frieze Seoul with a presentation that foregrounds the gallery’s artists from Korea, including Kim Yun Shin, Lee Bul, Do Ho Suh, and Sung Neung Kyung. Together, this intergenerational group of artists reflect a thriving and deeply rooted artistic environment in Seoul and international recognition beyond—each of these artists are celebrating a major milestone this year, from Kim’s participation in the Venice Biennale, to Lee’s new site-specific commission at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to Sung’s first solo exhibition in New York opening at Lehmann Maupin this October, and Do Ho Suh’s upcoming solo exhibition at the Tate Modern in London in 2025.
Concurrent to the fair, Lehmann Maupin artists have major exhibitions around the city. On view through November 3, 2024, Art Sonje Center will present the exhibition Do Ho Suh: Speculations, which will present an overview of the artist’s eponymous and ongoing series. In Speculations, the artist uses diverse storytelling approaches to share new possibilities for engaging with the emotional and physical complexities of life. In nearby Daejeon, Kim Yun Shin’s solo exhibition Kim Yun Shin: Letters from Argentina, which features works from Paris, Argentina, and Korea, is on view at Lee Ungno Museum until September 22nd. Also at the ARKO Art Center in Seoul, Kim is included in the group exhibition 2024 ARKO Selection: ZIP, which showcases a group of sixteen formative woman sculptors. The exhibition is open through September 8th. At Lehmann Maupin Seoul, an exhibition of new work by New York-based artist Nari Ward is on view through October 19, 2024. Titled ongoin’, the exhibition features copper panel works, sculpture, and wall-based installations that address aspects of healing and care that shape local communities—specifically in Harlem, the artist’s longtime neighborhood in New York.
At the fair, a focused selection of contemporary paintings (from 2011) and a selection of sculptures in wood and bronze by Kim Yun Shin will anchor the presentation. Kim’s sculptural practice engages with the fundamental qualities of materials and nature, navigating themes of confrontation, introspection, and coexistence. Historically, Kim’s sculptures use solid wood as their primary medium and are deeply rooted in traditional Korean hanok architecture, which uses a distinctive technique that joins wooden blocks without nails. Her more recent painted sculptures, cast in bronze, function as an expression of the artist’s spiritual energy. Her paintings are marked by distinctive surface fragmentation; across her compositions, large sections gradually divide into smaller shapes. The resulting artworks evoke a primordial energy, at once expansive and concise, concentrated and diffused. Concurrent to the fair, Kim’s work is on view in Foreigners Everywhere, the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Ahead of his debut solo exhibition outside of Korea at Lehmann Maupin New York, opening October 17th, Sung Neung Kyung will present historical works from his acclaimed Everyday English (2009–2010) and Venue (1985) series at the booth. Sung’s Venue works in particular demonstrate the artist's long-standing interest in the dynamic between language and power—here, the artist has carefully arranged close-up shots of press photographs that contain graphic symbols (like dotted lines, arrows, circles, and triangles), then added additional symbols to their surfaces with white ink. In this way, Sung critiques media censorship and suggests alternative modes of knowledge production and information sharing. Sung’s presentation at Frieze Seoul comes on the heels of his inclusion in the traveling group exhibition Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, which opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, NY in September 2023 and later traveled to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA in February 2024.
The gallery’s presentation also includes a recent Perdu painting by Lee Bul. Composed of multi-layered organic and inorganic materials like mother of pearl and acrylic paint, Lee’s Perdu CXC (2023) depicts an otherworldly and fragmented cyborg-like body, its parts suspended in space at various distances and in differing detail. This undefined form emerges from the picture plane as if proliferating or expanding, inhabiting a liminal space between biology and technology. Debuting September 12th, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will unveil Lee Bul’s Genesis Facade Commission. Titled Long Tail Halo, an installation of four new site-specific sculptures combining abstract and figurative elements will adorn The Met’s iconic facade niches.
Several drawings by Do Ho Suh are on view at the fair. Known for his decades-long practice that encompasses various media, Suh creates drawings, film, and sculptural works that confront questions of home, physical space, displacement, memory, individuality, and collectivity. Also at the fair, Do Ho Suh will partner with LG Electronics to present a new interpretation of his father Suh Se Ok’s work. Using LG’s latest OLED light displays, the presentation will unlock a new three-dimensional aspect of Suh Se Ok’s traditional ink paintings, exploring infinity as a space. In addition to this and to Do Ho Suh: Speculations at Art Sonje Centre, Suh will have a major survey exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, opening in May 2025.
Additional highlights include a new sculptural paper panel work entitled Stella Maris(Net) 4 (2024) by Teresita Fernández, whose work is currently on view in the exhibition Teresita Fernández / Robert Smithson at SITE Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico through October 28th, as well as in the solo exhibition Astral Sea at Lehmann Maupin’s temporary space at No.9 Cork Street in London’s Mayfair neighborhood through September 21st; a new painting by Tammy Nguyen, whose solo exhibition Timaeus and the Nations opens at the Sarasota Art Museum on October 20th; a new painting by Brazilian artist duo OSGEMEOS, ahead of their major survey exhibition OSGEMEOS: Endless Story at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., opening on September 29th; a painting by Lari Pittman, whose first museum survey exhibition in Asia, Magic Realism, is currently on view at the Long Museum in Shanghai through October 20th; and several works from Cecilia Vicuña’s ongoing Precarios series, ahead of her solo exhibition La Migranta: Blue Nipple at Lehmann Maupin New York this fall, which opens November 21st and will debut a new body of work. The gallery’s presentation will also include works by Loriel Beltrán, McArthur Binion, Billy Childish, Mandy El-Sayegh, Shirazeh Houshiary, Chantal Joffe, and David Salle.